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Gaza and the failure of the national project

Fatah, currently headed by Mahmoud Abbas, has failed to achieve liberation for the Palestinian people and has transformed into a bantustan organization.

Thaer GanaimAPA images

In order to understand the draconian measures taken by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority against the Gaza Strip, which has already been enduring a suffocating, decade-long Israeli siege, one has to scrutinize the Fatah movement’s diminished ideological and national agenda.

There is already a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, documented by international, local and Israeli human rights organizations. To add insult to injury, Israel has imposed severe restrictions on the import of construction materials needed for rebuilding the thousands of homes and institutions destroyed during the 2014 Israeli onslaught.

Palestinians of Gaza do understand that the Israeli siege is rooted in the history of Zionist settler-colonialism where the native is completely dehumanized and her death is not counted.

The Gaza Strip is itself a large refugee camp – 70 percent of its 2 million residents are refugees – a reminder of the original sin committed in 1948, when Zionist militias and later the Israeli army expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians from their original homes.

Israel is motivated to finish the job, to make sure that the unwanted surplus population are kept in a large prison, but without naming it as such.

And at the same time, those ungrateful “Arabs” of Gaza must understand that the siege is their fate since it is supported by a complicit international community, Arab regimes, and – most importantly – some of their own leaders. Hence comes the idea that Gaza is a place of infinite darkness, figuratively and literally.

Immoral decision

This unbearable humanitarian situation in Gaza is further compounded by the Palestinian Authority’s decision in April to suspend payments to Israel for electricity for Gaza, and its decision to reinstate taxes on fuel destined for Gaza.

This ultimately caused a shutdown of Gaza’s only power plant, which was already operating at reduced capacity due to damage sustained in repeated Israeli bombardments over the years, reducing electricity available to the Gaza Strip to the lowest levels ever.

Going even further, the PA has reduced funding to Gaza’s hospitals and clinics as well as put into effect drastic pay cuts to public sector employees whose salaries have provided a vital stream of revenue in the besieged coastal strip. For example, the salaries of Al-Aqsa University employees have been slashed by 80-90 percent for the fourth month in a row.

All of these deadly measures have been taken in a bid to pressure Hamas, the de facto ruling party in Gaza, into relinquishing its control and “reconciling” with the PA.

Some Fatah apologists have gone even further and claimed that all of these measures have been taken in defense of the “national project” which has supposedly been under tremendous threat by Hamas.

They, however, fail to explain how an academic’s salary ended up being a “threat” to the national project.

Fatah’s self-pitying analysis

In order to understand the PA’s measures against Gaza, one has to examine the weaknesses of Fatah – whose name is an acronym for “Palestinian Liberation Movement” – and its failure to achieve any of its declared goals, including its inability to accept its own defeat in the 2006 democratic elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council.

I would also argue that the latest Palestinian Authority strangulation of Gaza reflects not only the demise of Fatah – the faction that dominated the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for decades – but the demise of contemporary Palestinian nationalism in general.

Fatah started as a national liberation movement aiming to “liberate Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, through the barrel of the gun,” but it has moved into the postcolonial condition without achieving a single gain in democracy, justice or liberation for the Palestinian people.

It transformed into a bantustan organization bearing the trappings of a nonexistent “state.”

Through a mechanical and self-pitying analysis of the outcome of the 2006 elections and subsequent events in the Gaza Strip, Fatah has made its position clear: the dire humanitarian and political situation in the Gaza Strip has been caused by Hamas. And since most Gazans voted for Hamas, they have to pay this heavy price.

Fatah was the driving political force behind the Oslo accords that the PLO signed with Israel in 1993, and which have been associated with corruption and the selling-out of principles of self-determination as defined by international law, and of liberation.

Loss of faith

As a right-wing party, Fatah has been unable to understand the enormous changes and paradigm shift in politics in the Gaza Strip as a result of the three massacres Israel carried out between 2008 and 2014. These include a loss of faith in the ability of the current leadership to come up with any solution that guarantees justice, the dwindling support for the two-state solution and the rise of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. So Fatah leaders continue to reiterate the long-held misbelief that the Oslo accords are the only political route to a Palestinian state.

This remains a stark indication of their loss of faith in the power of the Palestinian people to reclaim their land and rights. Their approach is a repudiation of the undeniable, unprecedented steadfastness shown by the people of Gaza, the growing forms of popular resistance in the West Bank and the success of the global BDS movement.

Interestingly, the worst and most inaccurate comment made by Oslo supporters currently is that Oslo has nothing do with the situation and events in the Gaza Strip these days.

On the other hand, one wonders whether the de facto government in Gaza seriously believes that its new alliance of convenience with its political nemesis, former Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, can provide a solution to Gaza’s unending politically created challenges.

Dahlan was a mortal enemy of Hamas, but fell out with Fatah boss and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, meaning that Dahlan and Hamas are now making common cause.

Through the alliance with Dahlan, who is backed by the United Arab Emirates and close to the Egyptian regime, Hamas was able to secure a few days supply of fuel for Gaza’s power plant.

But allowing in a few liters of fuel through the Rafah crossing is pressure valve politics, nothing more.

Window of hope

In an article for Al-Shabaka, I argued that Palestinians must consider “dis-participation” in the current political system which has become illegitimate and ineffective.

The Gaza blockade comes in the context of Israel’s intrinsic genocidal tendency as a settler-colonial project that is characterized by a multitiered system of oppression.

In order to address the “Gaza crisis,” Israel, like apartheid South Africa before it, has to pay a heavy price.

This is what the BDS movement is doing. It is the only window of hope that we Gazans think will make an impact.

Comments

One tends to credit those suffering most directly from oppression with a better understanding of it. And it may be that its nature is better understood. But more often than not its underlying mechanisms are not.
It’s easy to target Fatah for its lack of success and paint it as hard-hearted and distant.
But can’t the occupation itself be described with the same words? Indeed, if Fatah and the PA had been successful in ’93 or at any time since, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. Is it really Fatah that doesn’t care about the Palestinian people or are they just less distant enough to catch the flak that should be directed at the oppressor.
But the oppressor is winning and unassailable so what do many Gazans do? They do what they’ve done for centuries when desperate; they go looking for the goat and sate themselves with his blood, even though it means they’ll be even more desperate the next day without him.
Abbas was conducting high level diplomacy on behalf of the Palestinian people in China and had to break off negotiations, in order to care for the children Dahlan is leading into a blind alley. Fortunately the Chinese are distant enough from Gaza to understand and remain mindful that Israel is the enemy of the Palestinian people and that their underlying mechanism for defeating them is to divide and conquer.